Social Responsibility in Manufacturing
ITS Products has strengthened its relationship with the Watford Workshop, a charity based in Watford, Hertfordshire. ITS will be collaborating with the workshop on a both it’s standard line of products and major projects involving healthcare and Critical National Infrastructure major project for which the main contractor is Siemens.
Watford Workshop is an inclusive organisation that employs staff who can be young adults right through to late middle age. The people that the workshop supports face challenges that can involve mobility impairment, learning disabilities, neuro-diverse conditions including autism, and Down’s Syndrome. Stimulated by the range of tasks and camaraderie, staff often choose to spend their entire working life here.
Over a hundred people a week come through the workshop doors to bond as a team and perform tasks that align with their interests, abilities and physical capabilities. Visit on a Wednesday and you might see upwards of 30 people engaged on anything from assembly of ITS’s units using base components to a radically different task such as packing replica models of London red buses. Client companies are both UK-based and international.
Outsourcing resource
Watford Workshop is a reliable, efficient outsourcing resource for client companies who appreciate the services offered. These include hand-packing, rework, labelling and assembly – with this last offering being where ITS has forged a relationship.
Chris Newman, a director of ITS Products, said: “There is always flexibility as to what the people who the workshop support can offer us in terms of turnaround times and volumes. With the nature of our work, ITS appreciates that there are no minimum quantities.”
Inclusivity
In general, Watford Workshop supports people facing challenges who live in a communal supported setting or with their family. Workshop staff reach out to individuals who might benefit from employment, while third party organisations often make an approach and propose a group of suitable people who can be supported as part of the workforce.
Alongside the activities involving work skills, supervisory staff provide vocational skills training and help people to become more independent.
Avinash Patil is marketing manager at Watford Workshop. He said: “Clients like ITS who outsource assembly work to us mean we can bring the people who work for us into a structured working environment. This gives them a sense of self-reliance when they might struggle in the mainstream work marketplace. They make new friends, feel that there is a pattern to their week and enjoy team spirit and shared purpose.”
Avinash continued: “The activities here combat what might otherwise be a sense of isolation and low self-esteem. When a new task is learnt, we often hear people say: ‘I never thought I could do that!’ We respect and value colleagues whatever their ability level. Some people here come to us direct as employees while others are referred through adult care services. The attitude at the workshop is that if one of the people we support wants to do something, we will empower them to make a difference.”
Corporate citizenship
Chris Newman continued: “Corporate citizenship has to be about walking the walk – about true social responsibility. But the relationship that ITS has with the workshop is commercial – and that needs to be stressed. This is reflected in how we then work with our customers..
“Watford Workshop’s people and systems are a serious business offering. In terms of component assembly work, being neuro-diverse can become a superpower in terms of attention to detail and ability to focus on a repetitive task. ITS and another workshop client, Warner Bros, not only speak openly about the relationship with the workshop but indeed celebrate it.”
In its interaction with Watford Workshop, ITS goes above and beyond usual communication methods in order to respect and react to the fact that service users may experience challenges with traditional written instructions. This might be because of learning difficulties or not having English as a first language. ITS use samples, pictorial instructions or even videos to show how an item is best assembled.
More than business efficiency
ITS have emphasised that partnering with a social enterprise in a manufacturing environment is not just business-efficient; such alliances mean that broader goals in terms of corporate citizenship and community focus can be achieved.
This case study shows that corporate responsibility and a company’s bottom line can have a positive not inverse relationship. Companies who work with organisations like Watford Workshop report that the relationships make them think outside the box and behave in a more agile manner.
Chris said: “Ethical working conditions that don’t just meet but exceed sector expectations have a ripple effect for employees, supervisors and contractors who benefit from output with zero or virtually zero product fail rate. Everybody from the main contractor to component suppliers and those in the component supply chain have their brand image enhanced through measurable behaviour and choices rather. And this is tangible, it counts far more than vague PR materials and mission statements.”
Manufacturing instructions
High quality and low fail rates stem from the fact that manufacturing instructions for workshop staff must be more detailed and intuitive than traditional in-house instructions.
To ensure that as many service users as possible at the workshop can undertake the tasks, ITS design and manufacture jigs and fixtures to allow people with cognitive or physical impairments to complete the processes. This is a further in-process quality check.
A fixture that only allows the components to be fitted one way makes the assembly process robust and inclusive. It’s an approach that widens the range of people who can be part of the extended manufacturing process. Partnering with the workshop gives ITS the ability to scale production capacity at short notice without having to consider traditional recruitment, induction and training processes.
Celebrating diversity
ITS proudly adds a label to each product that has elements of work from the Watford Workshop so that customers can see the positive impact a choice of this kind can have on wider society. More and more companies are working in this way to endorse inclusivity while also enjoying real business benefits.
